Those variants do have semantic differences from normal glyphs at least for some manuscripts (because it was only used for eye-related words), and were even rep

Those variants do have semantic differences from normal glyphs at least for some manuscripts (because it was only used for eye-related words), and were even reproduced in more modern literatures. Heart-dotted i and j are, at least for now, just stylistic variations. You can probably propose a variation selector for them, however.